Sabina Buczkowska edited untitled.tex  over 7 years ago

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It was at the Karlstad University library in the year 2008 when the light bulb moment struck. The Anselin's book on spatial analysis came into my hands and stayed with me until today. The day of completing the last chapter. The day of bringing the thesis to an end. endc  It never crossed my mind that I'd go live in another country. But as unlikely as it was, once I went, I never looked back. After living and studying in Poland, Sweden, and Germany. It was France which conquered my heart. Yet, our love was laborious, demanding, and grueling. Exactly seven years now living in Paris. That journey, from a mute new expat to an eventually quite fluent (or let's use with impunity a word O.K.) French speaker,   from knowing nobody to saying Hi! to all the "boulangers" and butchers on my street,  

Benoit for showing me how cool French people can be;  "Irritating" David who kept on reminding me not to take myself too seriously;  Katia, Christine, and Hoai-Thu, the Ifsttar super mothers!;  and the most original and the best coiffée X coiffé Kevin  from the Ifsttar cafeteria for providing the strong enough coffee. Prof. Michel Bierlaire who let me join his team at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne for a couple of months during my thesis and who gave me the chance to answer correctly maybe two out of his hundreds super challenging questions; and all the members of his team: always in trouble Yousef, Shadi, Marija, the genius Iliya, eating porridge at 4 P.M. Flurin, Antonin, running fast Tomas, Evantia, strong Riccardo, Anna, and Stefan.